Labor fury at rail plan delays
Colin Barnett's admission that the time line for delivering the Government's big two public transport projects will slip up to another two years is more evidence his "fully funded, fully costed" election pledge was a "lie", the Opposition says.
The Premier admitted in a weekend interview that the $1.9 billion MAX light-rail and $2 billion airport rail projects would likely be pushed back up to two years because WA had lost its AAA credit rating from Standard & Poor's.
The projects were promised to be delivered by 2018 in the election campaign, but the time frame slipped to 2019 in last month's State Budget.
Now Mr Barnett says they could be delayed a further two years. He said voters would understand, in the same way that they understood the Government had to push back building the new football stadium after the global financial crisis.
Shadow transport minister Ken Travers said it was clear the "fully funded, fully costed" plan was a lie.
"To try and hide behind the loss of the AAA credit rating now to break his promise is pretty poor form," he said. "We can now very clearly say that 'fully funded, fully costed' was a big lie to the electorate.
"The time frames (Mr Barnett) is now looking at . . . we're talking about this not even starting in this term of government but being completed towards the term after the next one (2021)."
Mr Barnett declined to comment yesterday.
Speaking to media before back-to-back meetings of the Economic and Expenditure Review Committee and State Cabinet yesterday, Treasurer and Transport Minister Troy Buswell would not speculate on the timing of work on the rail projects.
"I agree we need to work through a process in relation to our planned investments and understand the extent to which we can still deliver them," he said. "They are two major projects and I imagine they would be up for consideration."
